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Japanese Invasion of China
Japan attacked China for there resources and there military and economic elements. China was becoming a threat to Japan as it grew. So the Japaneses took over Manchuria and kept its hold on it until the end of the war. -
Germany's Invasion of Poland
One of Hitlers firsts acts he had taken while coming to power was to take over Poland. The Versailles Treaty, a pact between Germany and Russia, stated that Poland was to be partitioned between the two powers. This gave Germany the freedom to attack Poland without the fear of the Soviets attacking them. The Polish army was defeated within weeks of the invasion. -
German Blitzkrieg
The German word for "lighting war," was a military tactic to designed to create disorganization among enemy forces through the use of mobile forces and locally concentrated firepower. The first time they used this tactic was in Poland in 1939. When it was successful they did it in the invasions of Belgium, the Netherlands and France in 1940. -
Fall of Paris
Hitler invaded Paris, France. The french were unable to defend the city. The Germans entered with tanks, most french men and women fled earlier but some were trapped in there own cities. -
Operation Barbarossa
Adolf Hitler launched his armies eastward in a massive invasion of the Soviet Union: three great army groups with over three million German soldiers, 150 divisions, and three thousand tanks smashed across the frontier into Soviet territory. The invasion covered a front from the North Cape to the Black Sea, a distance of two thousand miles. -
Pearl Harbor
Hundreds of Japanese fighter planes attacked the American naval base at Pearl Harbor near Honolulu, Hawaii. The barrage lasted just two hours. The Japanese managed to destroy nearly 20 American naval vessels, including eight enormous battleships, and more than 300 airplanes. More than 2,000 Americans soldiers and sailors died in the attack, and another 1,000 were wounded. The day after the assault, President Franklin D. Roosevelt asked Congress to declare war on Japan. -
Bataan Death March
U.S. surrender of the Bataan Peninsula on the main Philippine island of Luzon to the Japanese. The approximately 75,000 Filipino and American troops on Bataan were forced to make an arduous 65-mile march to prison camps. The marchers made the trek in intense heat and were subjected to harsh treatment by Japanese guards. Thousands died on this march. -
Wannsee Conference
Wannsee Conference was where the 15 top Nazi bureaucrats to coordinate the Final Solution in which the Nazis would attempt to exterminate the entire Jewish population of Europe, an estimated 11 million persons. The whole house held many SS agents, especially the SS second in command, Reinhard Heinrich. -
Operation Gomorrah
This was a huge air force operation by the British and the U.S. Killing 42,600 civilians and wounding 37,000 in the city of Hamburg. This destroyed most of the city, leaving everyone to pick up the ruins. -
D-Day (Normandy Invasion)
The invasion was one of the largest amphibious military assaults in history and required extensive planning. Prior to D-Day, the Allies conducted a large-scale deception campaign designed to mislead the Germans about the intended invasion target. -
Operation Thunderclap
It had been under discussion within the Allied Command for some time, the proposal was to bomb the eastern-most cities of Germany to disrupt the transport infrastructure behind what was becoming the Eastern front. Also to demonstrate to the German population, in even more devastating fashion, that the air deference of Germany were now of little substance and that the Nazi regime had failed them. -
Battle of Iwo Jima
Following elaborate preparatory air and naval bombardment, three U.S. marine divisions landed on the island in February 1945. Iwo Jima was defended by roughly 23,000 Japanese army and navy troops, who fought from an elaborate network of caves, dugouts, tunnels and underground installations. In the end the marines won. -
Battle of Okinawa
The battle involved the 287,000 troops of the U.S. Tenth Army against 130,000 soldiers of the Japanese Thirty-second Army. At stake were air bases vital to the projected invasion of Japan. By the end of the 82-day campaign, Japan had lost more than 77,000 soldiers and the Allies had suffered more than 65,000 casualties including 14,000 dead. -
VE Day
Victory in Europe Day, the eighth of May spelled the day when German troops throughout Europe finally laid down their arms: In Prague, Germans surrendered to their Soviet antagonists, after the latter had lost more than 8,000 soldiers, and the Germans considerably more; in Copenhagen and Oslo; at Karlshorst, near Berlin, on the Channel Island of Sark the German surrender was realized in a final cease-fire. More surrender documents were signed in Berlin and in eastern Germany. -
Dropping of the Atomic Bombs
an American B-29 bomber dropped the world’s first deployed atomic bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The explosion wiped out 90 percent of the city and immediately killed 80,000 people; tens of thousands more would later die of radiation exposure. Three days later, a second B-29 dropped another A-bomb on Nagasaki, killing an estimated 40,000 people. Japan’s Emperor Hirohito announced his country’s unconditional surrender in World War II in a radio address on August 15 -
VJ Day
On August 14, 1945, it was announced that Japan had surrendered to the Allies, effectively ending World War II. Since then, August 15 have been known as “Victory over Japan Day." This day was celebrated all over the U.S. and still is today. -
Battle of the Bulge
Adolph Hitler attempted to split the Allied armies in northwest Europe by means of a surprise blitzkrieg thrust through the Ardennes to Antwerp. Caught off-guard, American units fought desperate battles to stem the German advance at St.-Vith, Elsenborn Ridge, Houffalize and Bastogne. As the Germans drove deeper into the Ardennes in an attempt to secure vital bridgeheads, the Allied line took on the appearance of a large bulge.
